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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361525">Dwell</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack'>lonerofthepack</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Taken 'verse [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>(both in context of law enforcement work), Grief, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mentioned Death of a Child, Referenced murder, Whumptober 2020, mentioned violent murder, survivor's guilt</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 03:09:05</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>603</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27361525</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/lonerofthepack/pseuds/lonerofthepack</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for 2020 Whumptober prompt: Broken Hearts: Grief | Survivor’s Guilt</p><p>Percival hadn't even especially liked Abernathy — a bit spineless, a bit of a bully when he thought he could get away with it. The sort of personality that escalated quietly and selfishly, and never quite absorbed the notion that hurting people was intrinsically bad, not just bad when you got caught. Slimy, especially on the streets, but not especially outstanding in the realm of mediocre villainy.</p><p>He hadn't deserved torture and death.</p><p>Part of the Taken 'verse</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Original Percival Graves &amp; Abernathy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Taken 'verse [10]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951963</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>7</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Whumptober 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Dwell</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Broken Hearts: Grief | <s>Mourning Loved One</s> | Survivor’s Guilt</p><p>Well, I missed the middle one, but we'll call this the other two.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p> </p><p>
  <span>It was odd — was it odd? To grieve a man who had — with every indication of fucking glee, even, the little bastard — kicked him in the ribs, managed a quite passably hateful Cruciatus, snapped his wand and watched another man get his fucking jollies off to making Percival curse at him through a filthy gag, bent over a half-splintered table.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Percival hadn't even especially liked Abernathy — a bit spineless, a bit of a bully when he thought he could get away with it, reports that were technically perfect to hide a number of not-quite illegal but certainly frowned upon things that Percival had had just about enough of. The sort of personality that escalated quietly and selfishly, and never quite absorbed the notion that hurting people was intrinsically bad, not just bad when you got caught. Slimy, especially on the streets, but not especially outstanding in the realm of mediocre villainy. </span>
</p><p>
  <span>He'd made excellent coffee, managed civil cases better than most after a sideways promotion, and could be trusted to gossip with and rat on any of the other few aurors who had the moral fortitude of an invertebrate when they did something that Percival could properly act on.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Percival had been going to slide the petulant little shit into a part of the Department where the worst he could get up to was a bit of embezzlement, since that was the sort of thing that hurt no one on the streets and no one on the force and put him in prime corruption look-out position. It was the sort of position that Congress lost their minds about every half-decade, which was going to give Percival another few years to prepare for a sanctioned house-cleaning.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He hadn't deserved torture and death. Hadn't deserved betrayal— or maybe he had, had earned it by falling in with a fucking Dark Lord, for jumping so high up the ladder form two-bit irritation to fucking scum that any other outcome had been laughably naïve. But Percival wouldn't have executed him, wouldn't have signed that order, and certainly wouldn't have allowed the sort of pain that had dragged those sounds out of him.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He heard those — they hadn't been screams. Screams needed breath, and Abernathy hadn't had any to spare. He heard those awful dying-creature noises in his sleep most nights. Couldn't get the limp slump of his body from spinning behind his eyes.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>It was odd. Abernathy's was certainly not his first dead body — couldn't get to be Director without handling murders, or potions lab accidents, or fucking wand discharges. Dead kids from wand accidents should take precedence if he was dreaming about bodies — or the no-majs that got ripped apart by psychopaths hopped out on experimental potions. The bodies of the dead from the war, or because of the war— </span>
</p><p>
  <span>But it wasn't killed toddlers or slow-murdered no-majs or boys sent to die in the mud who'd delivered him here to be a Dark Lord's toy and whipping boy. Whatever else Abernathy had been, he’d been one of Percival’s, his responsibility to keep — breathing, if not perfectly safe.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>Maybe it wasn’t proper grief— nothing like what Percival had suffered for the loss of his parents, or the death of a friend and compatriot— but it was hollow and aching and all he had to give, between bouts of fury and terror and feverish powerlessness.</span>
</p><p>
  <span>He shouldn’t have died, not like that. And there wasn’t anything Percival could do but wake with his death noises ringing in his ears and the slump of him beating a silhouette against the inside of his eyelids, limp and already gone.</span>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thank you very much</p></blockquote></div></div>
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